AUCKLAND WATERSIDE STRIKE.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 63, 7 December 1937, Page 4

AUCKLAND WATERSIDE STRIKE.

The strike of the Auckland waterside workers has begun to assume very serious proportions, there being now a large tonnage of shipping held up, including three or four big oeeangoing vessels, with others shortly due to arrive. The aggregate losses thus entailed for the shipping companies must run into a good many thousands a day, losses such as our farmers find refleeted in the extra freight charges on their export produce whieh the companies impose in order to help make up the extra operating costs resulting from delays in loading and discliarging cargo. Beyond this, of course, these hold-ups throw shipping programmes and time-tables altogether out of gear, and for the farmers they may easily mean the missing of favourable British maj'kets for their produce. That, however, does notseem to trouble the Government, as the Minister of Labour has intimated that, even if the dispute eontinues during the week, lie has no present intention to make any moye northward in order to help settle it. To fully appreciate the position it is necessary to understand that, largely at the instance of the Watersiders' Union, at Auckland an engagement bureau has been set up which is £Overned by rules mutually agreed upon by the shipowners and the union. One of these rules is that any man who accepts allocation to a particular vessel and, without some reasonable excuse, does not turn up for duty at the appointed time shall not be employed for any other vessel until work on the one in respect of which he has made default is completed, or he shall lose two days' work. On Thursday morning last a full team of nine gangs had been engaged — at overtime rate, 4s. an hour — to start work at 6 p.m. on the U.S.S. Co.'s coastal boat Waiana. However, later on in the day — there is some significance attaehed to its being the weekly pay-day — the team held a meeting of sorts and sent word to the Bureau secretary that they did not intend to put in an appearance until 8 o'clock next morning (Friday). As this was not by any means the first occasion on which some- I thing of the same k'ind had happened, the Bureau officials thought it was time to take some actiou. Aceordingly, still adhering to the Bureau rules, when the defaulters turned up on the Friday morning their serviees were dispensed with and a call made for men to take their place on the Waiana. To that call, though repeated from day to day, there has been no .re4sponse, the whole body of members of the union thus practieally backing up the violation of the rules committed by their fellow unionists. It is here that comes in a further and rather peeuliar rule of the Bureau, whieh provides that when a ship is left, as has been the Waiana, without service, then there can be no engagement of labour for any other ship Teaching port at a later date. It is a little bit difficult to understand the basis upon which such a rule was accepted by both parties, but th'e effect is that in the present case practically the whole shipping of one of our two biggest ports, increasing daily by new arrivals, is held up to the detriment of the whole country and especially of the farmejs with produce for export, and also no doubt of the Government itself with "guaranteed" butter and cheese awaiting shipment to the Old Country. And still it is under circumstances such as these that the Hon. H. T. Armstrong, Minister of Labour, so f ar as at time of writing we have yet heard, deems that there is no call upon him to intervene. His assumption no doubt is that the accumulation of shipping will become so great that the union is bound to win out in the end. Thus he, too, is tacitly— if not in other ways of which we do not hear — lending his support to a flagrant breach of agreement committed by union members. In this we may well see yet another evidence of the fear of the militant trade unions in which our present Government stands. *